How to format your references using the BioMetals citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BioMetals. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Grossniklaus U (2009) Plant science. Paternal patterning cue. Science 323:1439–1440

A journal article with 2 authors

Goyal SK, Konrad T (2013) Teleporting photonic qudits using multimode quantum scissors. Sci Rep 3:3548

A journal article with 3 authors

Watson EB, Thomas JB, Cherniak DJ (2007) 40Ar retention in the terrestrial planets. Nature 449:299–304

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Myers S, Bottolo L, Freeman C, et al (2005) A fine-scale map of recombination rates and hotspots across the human genome. Science 310:321–324

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Jenkinson J, Hyde T, Ahmad S (2008) Building Blocks for Learning: Occupational Therapy Approaches. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom

An edited book

Popper AN (2014) ASA S3/SC1.4 TR-2014 Sound Exposure Guidelines for Fishes and Sea Turtles: A Technical Report prepared by ANSI-Accredited Standards Committee S3/SC1 and registered with ANSI. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Stearns ML (2013) Private-Rights Litigation and the Normative Foundations of Durable Constitutional Precedent. In: Peters CJ (ed) Precedent in the United States Supreme Court. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 77–100

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for BioMetals.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) Scientists Discover A Potential Anti-HIV Protein In Corals. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-discover-potential-anti-hiv-protein-corals/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office (1972) Improving the Acquisition of Computer Systems. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Becknell JM (2013) Listening to narratives of war. Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Morris M (2012) Black Sheep. New York Times BR31

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Grossniklaus 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Grossniklaus 2009; Goyal and Konrad 2013).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Goyal and Konrad 2013)
Three or more authors: (Myers et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	BioMetals
Abbreviation	Biometals
ISSN (print)	0966-0844
ISSN (online)	1572-8773
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Biomaterials Metals and Alloys